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59

Ancient I dedicate this essay to the memory of Ken

Coates, scholarly Socialist and quite the
Socialism best man I ever knew.

More another time on Marxism and the

Barry Baldwin
The author is Emeritus
Professor of Classics at
the University of Calgary
in Canada. He studied in
Nottingham during the
1950s. His many writings
include notable works on
early Greek humorists and
satirists.
Classics; just one sample here to kick off.
Robert Service’s biography of Lenin
suggests he ‘first learned from
Demosthenes how to discern a crack in the
wall of an opponent’s argument and prise it
open’. A nice link here with Ken Coates’
last Spokesman editorial (no.109), which
twice ironically applies the Greek democrat
orator’s name to David Laws.
Homer’s Iliad has literature’s earliest
articulate squaddie. Thersites lambastes
Agamemnon for filching the best loot from
rank-and-filers who do the fighting and
dying, urging his comrades to pack up and
go home ‘that he may see how completely
he depends on the men’. Since the Iliad was
geared to aristocratic audiences, Thersites –
‘ugliest man in the army’ – can’t win. While
Agamemnon stands gob-smacked,
Odysseus simply knocks the humpbacked
agitator down. But, it is notable that the
poet felt bound to include this bolshie
private to challenge the Greek army brass.
In the Odyssey, though, our hero looms
paternalistic. The shepherd Eumaeus
confidently expects a retirement pension of
land, cottage, and woman from his grateful
lord – mutatis mutandis, the Upstairs
Downstairs ethic. Primitive feminism is
also adumbrated: Queens Penelope and
Arete both wield philanthropic influence
over their hubbies.
Property was key, at all levels. For
stealing Zeus’ fire from heaven for human
benefit, Prometheus acquires (notably from
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60 What’s happening at Fukushima?

Marxist George Thomson) the nickname ‘Patron Saint of the Proletariat’.

Pythagoras practised and preached the ideal of common ownership
(koinonia). Some early Christian communities followed suit. One source
for this is the atheistic satirist Lucian (2nd century AD), who also wrote a
good deal on the problems of the poor and sins of the rich. Perhaps for this,
plus his godlessness, long on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Authors,
Lucian was imitated in late Byzantium by Alexios Makrembolites, whose
Dialogue Between Rich and Poor (1343) defines life as a struggle between
the oppressed poor and privileged rich. His particular solution is
intermarriage between the classes (a big issue in the early Roman
Republic).
All this glosses Engels’ Origins of the State, Family, and Private
Property, also Robert von Pohlmann’s still fundamental Geschichte des
antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus (1893), which concluded that
ancient socialism was one of distribution and not a rearrangement of
society, a notion tempered by Aristophanes’ comedy Plutus, in which the
blind god of wealth recovers his sight, sees the wrong people have the
money, and redistributes accordingly.
This, along with his Ecclesiazousai, which imagines women seizing
control of the Athenian Government, may satirise Plato’s subversive ideas
that the ideal state should be run by a central committee of intellectuals of
both sexes. By promoting revolution in Sicily, Plato also anticipated
Marx’s dictum that the point is not just to explain the world but to change
it. He has been modernly labelled both communist and fascist – likewise
Sparta with its weird amalgam of military life-style, communal messes and
dormitories, and allowing of extraordinary social and financial influence
to women. In fact, his Republic is basically a utopia for gentlemen
paederasts, his Laws a repellent Stalinist totalitarianism. Karl Popper
rightly judged him an early enemy of The Open Society.
‘It is Socrates we need, not Plato.’ Thus Richard Crossman (Plato
Today, 1939). Since Socrates wrote nothing, we can’t say just how much
Plato puts into his mouth. I tend to agree with I. F. Stone’s deprecation
(The Trial of Socrates, 1988): he was little more than a Hyde Park Corner
character, equally adept at soap-box spouting and back-of-the-crowd
heckling.
Socrates did, though, hang out with one notorious group of dissentients:
cobblers. Eric Hobsbawm’s Uncommon People (1998) expatiates on the
political radicalism of 19th century shoe-makers. They were, in fact, soul
and sole-mates of their classical antecedents. Socrates hung out in their
workshops, discussing contemporary issues; places denounced by the
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Ancient Socialism 61

orator Lysias as the known haunts of ‘troublemakers’. Cicero similarly

ranted in Rome where there were 300 attested shoe-makers organised into
a guild or rudimentary trade union, such ‘colleges’ being routinely
clamped down upon by Julius Caesar and the emperors because of their
potential for unrest. Just as Athens had offered some basic medicare for the
poor, so individual emperors (notably Nerva and Trajan) extended
publicly-funded charities as palliatives, a policy lavishly followed by
Byzantine rulers. Laudable to a point, they did not silence the opposiiton:
as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century BC historian) observed, this
kind of institutional philanthopy served to increase dependence, keeping
the lower orders in their place. Lucian frequently used cobblers as
paradigms of the politically percipient poor, vociferous advocates of class
struggle. With the advent of Christianity, shoe-makers acquired a pair of
radical new saints, Crispin and Crispian, martyred after setting up
philanthropic business in (one version) Faversham, Kent, charging only
such money as a customer could afford. Such practices evoked a largely
bad Byzantine press. ‘Being a cobbler, he was of no social significance,’
sneered the historian Agathias at one; other writers castigated them as ‘the
most stupid and ignorant’ individuals in Constantinople, all doubtless a
tribute to their practical radicalism. The monk Theodore of Studion offers
a rare counter-laudation, based on the doubtful premise that St Paul was a
shoe-maker, perhaps recognising that, in the context of pagan Rome, Paul
himself was a dangerous radical. Hobsbawm sadly notes a falling-off of
revolutionary shoe-making in the 20th century.
The liveliest iconoclast in Plato’s Athens was Diogenes, who famously
lived in a tub (or wine-cask) – the founder of Cynicism (from the Greek
for ‘dog’), often dubbed ‘the philosophy of the proletariat’. Apart from his
celebrated stunts (public defecation/urination/masturbation) designed to
prove the relativeness of societal values, he tried to break down Greek
parochialism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world, coining the
word ‘Cosmopolitan’ – an embryonic ‘Workers of the World, Unite’..
Derided for their long hair and scruffiness, Cynics became notorious in
the Roman Empire as itinerant agitators, persuading slaves to run away
and workers to down tools. Despite slavery – Marx made this point – co-
existent free workers could and did take industrial action. Bakers, builders,
and mint workers were the most militant, with one such strike even
winning contractual sick benefits.
The later Roman Empire experienced a growing gulf between city and
country life. Urban militancy was offset by peasant revolts, notably the
‘Bagaudae’ in Gaul (Ken Coates’ colleague at Nottingham, also my old
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62 What’s happening at Fukushima?

professor, Edward Thompson – EA, not EP – wrote the definitive accounts

of these), and the Donatists in North Africa.
Reflecting on the Spanish Civil War, Orwell desponded over the
obliteration of ancient slaves’ names, concluding, ‘I can think of two. The
rest have gone down into utter silence.’ Yet literary and epigraphic texts
have preserved thousands. Naturally, Spartacus is one of Orwell’s two
(Epictetus the other). Thanks to Marx’s encomium (Letter to Engels,
1861), ‘a capital fellow, a true proletarian,’ Spartacus became a communist
icon (Rosa Luxemburg, Khatachurian’s ballet, etc.), evoking novels by, for
example, the Marxist Howard Fast (from which the Hollywood film) and
Arthur Koestler, the latter’s roughly reviewed by Orwell.
I long ago (Classical Journal 62, 1967) pieced together the scrappy
hostile ancient sources. One says he insisted on equal division of all loot,
and banned his followers from using gold and silver. Nothing new here.
Spartacus was the last in a line of slave uprisings. Eunus in Sicily had
promised social reform. Aristonicus in Asia a Sun City where all should be
free, inspired by the Greek philosopher Blossius, former ideological coach
of Tiberius Gracchus, radical People’s Tribune lynched by a senatorial
mob.
Both the Athenian Democracy and Roman Republic were slave-based
and excluded women. But it is not enough to condemn and leave them at
that. In Marx’s words, they were an exemplary ‘childhood of humanity’.
Patterns were more kaleidoscopic than regular. Greeks apparently saw no
paradox in the island Chios’ reputation as the birthplace of both democracy
and slavery. Athens, for instance, had a police force comprised of slave
Scythian archers. In Rome, slaves could buy their freedom, after which
they were upwardly mobile, frequently attaining high rank at imperial
courts. Aristotle may have proclaimed that women were inferior beings
without souls, but Plato deemed them equal to men, save in physical
strength – compare and contrast what Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra
Kollontai had to put up with. Women played major roles in literature,
mythology, and religion. Egypt had one female pharoah, Byzantium
several ruling empresses. Graeco-Roman history abounds in women
pulling the strings.
At its height, from Pericles to the Macedonian conquest, Athens was a
soviet of adult male citizens meeting in regular session at 10-day intervals
plus special ones as needed. The quorum was 5000, probably –
demographics are uncertain – a high proportion of the eligible population.
No problem filling the Assembly (Ecclesia) for emergency meetings.
Regular ones might need the slave police whipping them in with red-paint-
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Ancient Socialism 63

daubed ropes (hence our ‘roping in’ and ‘whips’). For obvious time and
travel logistics, urban attendance (but not always interests) prevailed over
rural. There was usually one dominating individual. Pericles (thanks to
Thucydides’ write-up and Plutarch’s biography) is the most famous, but
even he was pilloried by the comic playwrights (hence his ineffectual
attempt to muzzle them) and once voted out of office. Since most Athenian
sources (Herodotus notably excepted) were anti-democratic, popular
orators such as Cleon were dismissed as ‘demagogues’. The Assembly had
an attractive reputation for heckling down uninformed speakers on specific
business. Viewed both in hindsight and at the time, mistakes were made.
The Sicilian invasion looks the worst now. A decision to slaughter the
rebellious Mitylenians was revoked at a recalled session in which Cleon
was worsted by the otherwise unknown ‘ordinary’ citizen Diodotos. Apart
from Assembly attendance pay (a small sum, but incentive for the poor),
political offices were unpaid, the holders being called to account at the end
of their year – term limits, as at Rome, being integral – and liable to fine
or execution if found guilty of fiddling. Another expedient was Ostracism,
the 10-year exiling of the politician deemed the biggest pest, without loss
of property or reputation – obscure individuals often apparently voted for
themselves to get a ‘name'.
Even Plato conceded that, Socrates’ execution apart – we could add the
religious prosecutions of a few other philosophers, for example,
Anaxagoras and Diagoras, blots on the Democracy’s talismanic slogan
‘Parresia’ (freedom of speech) – the Assembly behaved ‘with moderation’.
Above all, it did not misuse its plenipotentiary power by granting itself all
manner of indefensible and unaffordable perks.
The Roman Republic was as confused as the American one, whose
Founding Fathers looked admiringly back to it through Plutarch’s rose-
tinted glasses (full story in Meyer Reinhold’s Classica Americana, 1984;
for some suggestive Roman-British comparisons, see Ferdinand Mount’s
Full Circle: How The Classical World Came Back To Us, 2010). Through
occasional general strikes (‘secessions’), remarkably lacking in violence,
Rome evolved from monarchy to a theoretical People’s Republic in 287
BC when resolutions passed by the Plebeians-only council became binding
on the entire population, this class’ interests also protected by the Ten
Tribunes whose veto powers could bring government to a halt. In practice,
this did not happen. Conservative-minded Romans of all classes continued
to respect the prestige of the Senate, and obstinately kept re-electing
members of a close-knit aristocratic family circle. Officers of state (and
religion) were annually (term limits and no pay long applied to all civilian
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64 What’s happening at Fukushima?

and military positions) elected by a variety of Comitia (from which our

dread ‘Committee’), organised respectively on the basis of income, class,
and geography – this last did something to reduce urban-rural imbalance.
To Rome we owe among other things the word ‘proletarian’ and (139 BC)
introduction of the secret ballot. Cicero, the most articulate champion of
the system – for which no legions were willing to fight in the last pre-
imperial century of civil wars between usurping generals – banged on
about the need for Concordia Ordinum (Social Harmony).

Further Reading (in addition to items mentioned in the text):

Dawson, Doyne, Cities of the Gods: Communist Utopias in Greek Thought
(1992)
Ferguson, John, Utopias of the Classical World (1975)
McCarthy, George E., Classical Horizons: The Origins of Sociology in
Ancient Greece (2003), plus many cognate books on Marx and antiquity
Ste Croix, G. E. M. de, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World
(1983, 2nd ed. 1997, misleading title – comports much on Rome and
Byzantium)

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